SHIFTING PERSPECTIVES

Aracelia Aguilar is a Latinx community member who is one of the Empowerment Directors with DeafHope in Oakland, California.  Aracelia focuses on Direct Services, working with Domestic Violence and Sexual Violence Survivors in the Deaf Community.  Aracelia dedicates her time with survivors with intersectional experiences of challenges around the system and barriers that prevents healing as a whole also exploring options that provides healing.  Aracelia also focuses on teen dating violence with residential and mainstreamed Deaf Youths.  

Rachel Arfa is a staff attorney, PABSS Project Manager, and Illinois ADA Project Manager at Equip for Equality, Illinois' governor-designated protection and advocacy organization, responsible for advocating for the civil and human rights for people with disabilities. Ms. Arfa’s work focuses on employment discrimination and civil rights violations. Ms. Arfa is the President of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Bar Association.  Ms. Arfa received a B.A. in American Culture from the University of Michigan, and a J.D. from the University of Wisconsin School of Law. 

Sharon Caserta was born in the Boston, Mass. area and began her professional career as an American Sign Language interpreter. She interpreted extensively in the legal systems in New England where she also operated a legal interpreter referral service. Upon graduating cum laude from Florida Coastal School of Law, she was awarded an Equal Justice Works Fellowship and created the first deaf/hard of hearing litigation unit in Legal Aid. In 2016 she established a Deaf/Disability Rights Unit at Morgan and Morgan. She has dedicated her practice to representing persons with disabilities as they fight for equality, dignity, and advancement. Ms. Caserta’s articles  have been published in the Clearing House Review Journal of Poverty Law and Policy.

Amber D. Farrelly, J.D., B.A., Texas Advanced and Court Interpreter Certified .  Amber D. Farrelly received her undergraduate degree from the University of Oklahoma at Norman and her Juris Doctorate degree from Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law with the highest distinction for her pro bono work.  Amber began her legal career clerking for both defense teams in the Yogurt Shop Murders shortly after their reversals in 2007 until both cases were dismissed in 2009.  She began practicing as a criminal defense attorney in 2009, and has worked with the Innocence Project, The Innocence Project of Texas, and the Texas Civil Rights Project. 

Amber is licensed in and practices throughout the state of Texas and in the U.S. Western District.  Amber specializes in Deaf clientele and is a court-certified interpreter in American Sign Language (ASL).  Working with the Conviction Integrity Unit in Dallas County, she testified as an expert witness on ASL and Deaf culture in the Stephen Brodie exoneration case—the only Deaf person exonerated in the United States.  She has consulted and testified on numerous cases involving Deaf individuals as an expert. 

Amber is the former president and current parliamentarian of the Texas School for the Deaf Foundation Board.  She is dedicated to and an advocate for the Deaf.   

Amber received the Texas Society of Interpreters for the Deaf President’s Award in 2016.  She was named Travis County Woman Lawyer of the Year for 2012.  She has given numerous presentations and workshops on legal interpreting and Deaf rights.  She has also been a guest on 48 Hours, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, America’s Most Wanted, Intersections Radio, and Legal Broadcast Network.                                                 

Najma Johnson is the Executive Director of DAWN. A BlackDeafBlindPanQueer folk (they and them pronouns), Johnson is an anti-violence community collectivist. They offer spaces and facilitates dialogue within the Deaf community about interpersonal violence, anti-violence, survivor-centric based accountability, and healthy/safe relationships. Johnson has worked with DDDDBHH BIPOC sex workers, trafficking survivors, victims of law enforcement violence, domestic violence survivors, and sexual violence survivors who have experienced cultural challenges that arise from seeking Deaf services due to intersectional identities. Johnson is a native of Buffalo, New York and graduated from St. Mary’s School for the Deaf in Buffalo. They earned their B.A. in Deaf Studies and M.A. in Mental Health Counseling from Gallaudet University. Johnson co-founded Together All in Solidarity (TAS), an umbrella social justice community collaboration that functions as a network for marginalized communities within the Deaf community. Prior to coming to Washington, D.C., Johnson provided trauma-informed therapeutic work with SAFE Alliance in Austin, Texas. Johnson’s hope is to continue working with all communities within the Deaf community for the purpose of creating a strong, accountable interdependent community.

Talila Lewis was named one of Pacific Standard Magazine's Top 30 Thinkers Under 30 and a 2015 WhiteHouse Champion of Change, Talila A. Lewis is a social justice engineer who uses lawyering, organizing, popular education, and multi-modal data visualization to disrupt cycles of violence and systemic inequity. Lewis’ advocacy primarily focuses on prison abolition, decriminalizing disability, ending wrongful convictions of deaf and disabled people, and providing support to multiply-marginalized deaf and disabled people affected by mass incarceration.

Lewis co-founded & serves as the volunteer director of HEARD, a volunteer-dependent nonprofit organization that works to end incarceration of and violence against deaf and disabled people. As one of the only people in the world working on deaf wrongful conviction cases, Lewis regularly presents at universities; testifies before legislative & regulatory bodies; and trains members of congress, attorneys, interpreters, and organizations about this and other disability-related topics. As the creator of the only national databases of deaf incarcerated people, Talila advocates with and for hundreds of deaf defendants, incarcerated and returned people.

 A graduate of American University Washington College of Law, Lewis also co-founded the Harriet Tubman Collective and co-developed the Disability Solidarity praxis; serves as a consultant on various topics including racial, economic, gender, and disability justice; and previously served as the Givelber Public Interest Lecturer at Northeastern University School of Law and as a visiting professor at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Lewis is a 2018 Roddenberry Fellow and 2018 Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity; and has received awards from numerous universities, the American Bar Association, the American Association for People with Disabilities, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, the Nation Institute, National Black Deaf Advocates, and EBONY magazine, among others.

Howard A. Rosenblum is the Chief Executive Officer of the National Association of the Deaf (NAD).  In this capacity, he oversees the operations of the NAD to carry out its mission of preserving, protecting and promoting the civil, human and linguistic rights of deaf and hard of hearing people in the United States. He also serves as the Legal Director overseeing the staff lawyers as well as policy advocacy and litigation work within the NAD Law and Advocacy Center. Mr. Rosenblum has twenty-seven years of experience as a disability rights attorney including: seven years overseeing and directing the NAD Law and Advocacy Center; nine years as a Senior Attorney at Equip for Equality, a nonprofit organization designated as Illinois’ Protection and Advocacy entity; and ten years before that with a private law firm. His legal practice has been in the areas of disability rights and special education.  He is the primary author of the American Bar Association Guidelines on Court Access for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People and the sixth edition of the NAD Legal Rights: Guide for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People. He has provided numerous workshops nationally and internationally on the Americans with Disability Act, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. He currently serves as the legal advisor to the World Federation of the Deaf. In 2010, he was appointed by President Obama to serve on the U.S. Access Board and was reappointed in 2014. Mr. Rosenblum received his law degree from IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law (1992), and his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Arizona (1988).